


not half the man i used to be

by peculiar_mademoiselle



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: F/M, Inspired by the short story and short film Snodgrass, John at 50, M/M, What if John had left the Beatles in 1962?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:26:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peculiar_mademoiselle/pseuds/peculiar_mademoiselle
Summary: John Lennon left the Beatles in 1962 over 'creative differences.'Now, almost thirty years later, his life isn't what he thought it would be.
Relationships: (past), Cynthia Lennon/John Lennon, John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	not half the man i used to be

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavily inspired by the short story Snodgrass, and the short film adaptation of the same name. It envisions a world where John left the Beatles over a song dispute in 1962, and ended up walking away from everything. 
> 
> In 1991 John is 50, with nothing at all going for him. The film tracks him as he attends his first day in an office job, but self-sabotages it. In this AU, the Beatles were famous but not hugely so. In fact John comments that had he stayed they could've been "bigger than The Hollies."
> 
> The film ends with John's landlady telling him that Paul is looking for him. I picked up that thread and ran with it.

**_1991:_ **

“I used to be a rock’n’roller.”

It’s whispered desperately but bitterly, like the prayer someone mutters when deep down they know everything is already fucked. Leaning against the mirror cools his face, and means he doesn’t have to look at his own visage. To see the way his face has sagged, his hair has greyed, his body has softened. Ageing happened slowly and then all at once, until now he no longer recognises himself, not really. Not even when he meets his own myopic eyes in the reflection of a grimy bus window. He’s all dusty curtains of hair and granny glasses now, Ted days dead, buried, and decomposed. 

He knows he should be reeling after losing another job, after further confirmation that putting him in an office environment is pretty much impossible, a proper square peg in a round hole scenario. Not that he’d really wanted the job anyway, he’d pressed self destruct as soon as the vision of licking envelopes all day, every day, forever and ever, had cemented in his mind. He would have eventually jumped out the third floor window anyway, to get away from the gormless stare of poor Doris, who was fiddling with her stapler and mustering the courage to sidle over to him and say, " _Hey, weren’t you that guy who left the-_ ”

Yes. He’d have landed in the car park like a pound of strawberry jam. 

He had enough money for now anyway, nicked from the young landlady who he occasionally shagged when her vile boyfriend was away. She was nagging him for rent but she didn’t mean it, not really. Her eyes went all soft when she looked at him, no doubt imagining she was rolling in the hay with some rebellious star, rather than the washed-up remnants of a would-be minor celeb. 

That was his own fault, he supposed. Somewhere along the way he’d become that guy down the pub with all the stories, back-in-my-day-ing til the cows came home. Some days he felt more memory than man, clinging to those golden moments like they were life preservers and he was lost at sea. Some days he felt like his old man, a first-class bullshitter. 

A woman had asked him once, how he lived with himself, how he didn’t spend every day dwelling on what might have been. The horrible truth being that they were two different questions - he had lived, and he’d still managed to dream up endless what-ifs every time he heard Yesterday on the sodding radio. Not just about the band, but everything he’d walked away from. He could still hear the bairn in Cynthia’s arms wailing as she called after him, her soft voice harsh as tearing paper as she begged. (The kid never tracked him down, just as well really, as there was nothing to find.)

Maybe he and Cyn would still be together, living miserably in some soulless detached house in the country, walking distance from a suspiciously cheap pub, with a clientele made up of the worst kind of curtain twitchers. Or maybe he’d have left her anyway, and been married to someone else, some exotic bird with a big hat collection which made her always resemble a tacky wedding cake. 

Either way though, he’d have been with _him_. 

Which brought him back to why he was currently having a fucking nervo in his upstairs loo. His landlady’s breathy, excited voice was still ringing in his ears, along with the pounding of his heart. 

“He was here! Paul! From the band! He said he’d be back in a bit!” 

It was almost too much to believe. Paul McCartney had been in this place, his shitty house in the arse end of nowhere, had probably stood in their dingy kitchen, and leaned against their counter littered with chipped mugs and shoddy utensils. No doubt his shined shoes had squeaked against the dirty floor. 

After thirty years of flipping over the page or the channel when confronted with that face, that face had finally come looking for him. To say that memories were supposed to fade with time, he was shocked that he could still recall the last time he’d seen Paul’s face with crystal-clarity. The disappointment in the lines of his brow, the distance in his eyes, and he turned and led John’s beloved group down that dismal path. 

John should have known he could only coax Paul into rebellion the once. That getting him to revolt against the wishes of daddy dearest was the final ace he could play. He accidentally wedded Paul to the idea of stardom, and when the time came, he didn’t have the tools to tear the two asunder. So John had left, on the point of pride. And he’d got stuck. Stuck talking to himself on the upper deck of the bus, one social step up from the woman on the lower deck who the driver let on out of pity so she could have a break from hauling her worldlies up and down the street, gulping at the bottle like a babe unweaned. 

The knock at the door made him jerk, and almost headbutt the streaky mirror. Distantly he could hear his landlady sell him out, and a moment later someone bounded up the stairs and began rattling at the locked door handle. 

John lit himself a ciggie, and let out a shuddering exhale. Then slowly, carefully, he unlatched the door. 

Paul hadn’t aged particularly well either, thank God. His big eyes had become droopy, rendered by the years as less _come hither_ and more _please don’t divorce me and take the kids_. His hair was feathered, and long, the ghost of an 80s mullet. It dated him. He was wearing a smart suit, perfect down to the gleaming cufflinks. The Beatles had never been massive, more scraping the middle of the poppermost than riding at the toppermost, still, Paul clearly had more money than had ever passed through John’s hands. 

“John,” Paul’s voice quivered, the word permeated in some unnameable emotion. 

The man himself blew out a big cloud of smoke, right into Paul’s face, who winced. “Who’s asking?” was his faux-prissy reply, refusing to meet the other man’s eyes. 

“John,” he repeated, firmer this time, “what...what have you been up to?” It clearly wasn’t what he intended to ask, but he waited for an answer all the same. 

“Ah, this and that. Boozing. Fagging it. Going on the dole. Time honoured British traditions, wouldn’t you agree?” he sniped. But John’s heart was beating against his ribcage like a bird. He wanted to hold him, to breathe him in. He wanted to beat him over the head with the lid of the toilet tank. 

Paul’s face crumpled at that. Clearly, he’d imagined John as some isolationist painter living out his days in a seaside cottage. He hadn’t envisioned him as this chewed up and spat out shirker, stewing in his own bile. 

“I hired a private detective. That’s how I found you." How very flattering. "I’ve - I’ve been thinking about you, a lot. For a long time. And I had to tell you...that I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

John would have throttled him if it weren’t for the pain spreading through his chest. How dare he say sorry, now? As though years could be wiped away like grime from a mirror? Paul's eyes were gleaming wet though, and that made something in him deflate, weariness leaking into every pore.

“What do you want from me?” John sighed, taking another long drag. 

“Just to talk,” was the instant answer, honest and unpretentious. Years must really change a man, he thought, wryly. 

“Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax. Of cabbages and kings..” John sing-songed, pretending not to revel in the smile that produced, or the way that smile crinkled Paul’s eyes. It was nice to get a reaction like that. A reaction that wasn’t someone scooping up their squalling child and moving seats on the bus, perturbed. 

“Please.” Paul said, voice just barely plaintive. He took a step forward, until his face was inches from John’s own. “Please.” 

John could see himself reflected in the reducing chamber of Paul’s eye, and for once, really looked at the way he’d greyed and collapsed, fading like an old photograph. Melancholy ripped through him like a wound, and he closed his eyes. When he spoke, it was with the air of an old storyteller, every drunken spiel he’d delivered to an unsuspecting barmaid coalescing into something altogether more profound. 

“I used to be a rock’n’roller…”

( _I still am._ )

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Do let me know!
> 
> If you fancy watching the film it's on YouTube. Ian Hart (from The Hours and Times and Backbeat) plays John. It's worth a watch, imo. Even though it's a bit bleak. 
> 
> For non-Brits, 'fagging it' means to smoke, and to be 'on the dole' means to collect benefits from the government while unemployed. Paul's vision of John as a lonely artist is inspired by the film Yesterday (which I think is a decent film with a major issue with its premise...!) and John is quoting from The Walrus and the Carpenter at the end there. 
> 
> My tumblr is comewhatbrianmay - come chat to me. <3


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